The Ringworld Throne (25 page)

Storage areas behind the doors, and not much in the storage areas. Dried plants, various kinds, some covered with fungus ...

Harpster said, “Gleaners and Grass Giants found some dried roots here, not much else. But these lights are blinding, and if we turn them off it’s like being buried.”

“Harpster? Can’t you see in the dark?”

“Night People can see at
night
. By Archlight. Even in a rainstorm it’s not
black
.”

None of these cupboard doors was even big enough for a Gleaner. “Did you find any more doors?”

“Nothing man-sized.”

A cheery voice called, “What about Hanging People?”

Tegger jumped. That was Warvia!

She was looking down at him from above a wall of boxes. “Warvia! Where have you been?” he cried.

She laughed, flattered. “Behind you as you left the dock. When your prey stopped, I bathed in a pool so I could get closer still.”

Harpster said, “Prudent. Our sense of smell is better than you might guess. So, shall we invite you into our puzzle?”

She jumped down. On her back was one of Valavirgillin’s alcohol flamers. “I heard most of it and solved some of it. Come and look?”

“We follow.”

Warvia led them back into the heat. “You know, “ she said, “the raw foodstuffs probably come up from the docks, up the alleys. Whatever they do to it here, there’s probably some chemistry involved, things none of us would do to food. But it’s food going
down
that has to be in small clumps.”

Grieving Tube asked, “Truly? Why?”

Warvia moved among the tables and hot surfaces and doors. “You’re watching a play. Or you’re playing dominance games for high stakes, water and grazing rights. Or your Thurl is speaking your tribe’s future. Down comes your dinner, but it’s half a weebler. It’s burnt black on the outside and seared dry on the inside, just the way you like it, and there’s enough to feed twenty people, but there’s twenty-six of you! What now?”

She’s worked this out after she had the answer, Tegger thought. She was enjoying herself greatly.

“You fight for your share. Or you try to cut it evenly, but maybe six of you are all trying, too. You forget the play or the shouting match or the speech. The actors grow enraged, or the Thurl. But if individual portions come down, nobody needs to fight,” Warvia said.

Here was a little door set into a wall, a thick door with a window in it, showing two shelves in a box. Warvia opened the door and put her hand in—

Tegger shouted, “Hot!”

“I touched the door first, love.” She pushed against the back of the box, and the box wiggled. “Watch this.” She closed the door and flipped a switch down.

The box dropped away, leaving an empty space behind.

“The door won’t open now, “ she said, and showed them.

Harpster asked, “How far down does it go?”

“It should go to where food’s wanted. What you were saying, I never could see why
people
had to go down with the food. So I touched every door, and opened doors that weren’t hot, and this was what was loose. Then I had to find someplace to put a strip of Vala-cloth.”

Harpster flipped the switch to its middle position, then up. “That box wouldn’t hold a man.”

“It’ll hold me, if we take the shelves out.”

It would hold Tegger as easily. Tegger didn’t bother offering. Warvia’s puzzle, Warvia’s choice. Red Herders are territorial.

The shelves came up and out easily. Maybe the old City Builders did sometimes send down a whole burnt weebler or whatever. Warvia tried to crawl into the resulting space and couldn’t.

The Night People lifted her bodily into place. On her side, her legs and arms sprawled past the door. On her back, on her face ... but her legs wouldn’t fold that far. Tegger thought of tearing the top off the box, to see if there was room above it. What he finally said was, “Even major surgery won’t get you in there with weapons too.”

“I’d go naked!”

“You don’t fit,” Grieving Tube said. “This is a box for a Gleaner. Try all you like, Warvia. We are not hurried. Harpster my love, our part here is over. Gleaners don’t wake until full day.”

The Night People chatted as they walked back to the docks. Harpster said, “We should send something down ahead of our emissary. A bottle of fuel? Balanced to spill over? In case there are vampires between him and the fuse box. A quick fireball,
poomf
.”

Tegger didn’t feel like talking, and Warvia spoke not at all. They crawled under their awning and watched Grieving Tube and Harpster slink away.

Then Warvia took Tegger’s hand and slid out the other side of the awning. They ran softly to where the docks narrowed to become Rim Street. “We explored while you slept,” Warvia whispered. “Follow me.”

Tegger said, “I have to tell you about something.”

“On the ramp? I heard. You went mad. I went mad. We’re still mates. But, love, I do not see how we can go home.”

Tegger sighed, relieved that such a nightmare could be solved so easily. “Where, then?”

“I have half a notion. Come.”

They ran a zigzag path through a system of alleys, climbed through and along pipes to reach a higher level, working their way up.

Warvia led the way over the banquet hall and down, and farther up, and behind the chimney, and around, on their bellies now, toward a sound of metal being tortured.

The noise stopped.

Warvia gestured him back. She stood and stepped forth. “Very good. Now how will you get it down?”

Harpster and Grieving Tube finished lowering the great ceramic slab onto its back. They had cut it no more than a thumblength thick; it must be quite fragile, Warvia assumed. The front of it was a bronze web of intricate geometric form.

Harpster said, “We do love our secrets. Still, this slab isn’t going down unless in a cruiser. We’ll have to tell the Boss. So. How much do you know?”

“I saw you cutting it. Looked it over after you led Tegger away. What is it? Why do you want it?”

Harpster said, “We think it’s an eye and an ear and maybe other senses, too. We think it belongs to Louis Wu and his off-Arch companions.”

“We think they were the ones who recentered the sun,” Grieving Tube said. “That would make them immensely powerful. We could tell them how to use that power, if we could communicate with them—“

“But Louis Wu popped into some kind of flying tube. Later our sources saw that tube, or another such, hovering near the Shadow Nest. Night People elsewhere report more such webs. It must be for spying.”

Warvia asked, “You’ll try to talk to it?”

“We’ll try that. If nothing answers, then we’ll take it to where it can see what we want seen.”

“Tegger and I can’t go home,” Warvia said carefully. “If we had Night People to speak for us as heroes, we might find entry into another tribe of Red Herders. With that in mind, where do you intend to travel?”

Harpster began to bark laughter. Grieving Tube snapped at him. “Fool! They need not come all the way. Warvia, we—No, tell me this instead. How much shock can you stand?”

Warvia beckoned. Tegger came into view. No point in hiding now, he was laughing too hard. He said, “If you think you can still shock us, go ahead and try.”

Harpster began to talk.

Tremendous tilted faces looked out of the rock. Two Red Herders and two even larger Night People spoke secrets none could hear, for an audience—

Louis Wu was the only one laughing.

Louis tore his gaze free of the Hindmost’s show. For the locals it must seem that they were watching gods decide their fate.

The Sailing People had run.

He saw no trace of Tunesmith or Kazarp.

Weavers were all about him, but most of them were asleep. Torpid Weaver children were trying to keep their eyes open. Tomorrow they’d know they had dreamed. Louis Wu was alone before these tremendous faces.

He said in Interspeak, for the Hindmost’s benefit, “Those Ghouls came a long way to steal a webeye. They really must want to talk to you.”

The view changed. For the blink of an eye it became an infrared map of the village pool: black water, faintly glowing Weavers asleep on low tables, the brighter glow of Louis Wu’s naked skin ... and a lacework glow behind him, and another alongside the Council House.

Kazarp and Tunesmith hidden in tall grass. The Ghouls are watching, too. Will they recognize themselves?

Huge faces dimmed. The webeye and its brick backing were being set down in darkness. Now the cliff was only dark rock.

The sun was no more than a sliver of light palely glowing through cloud when Valavirgillin rolled out to see what the commotion was about.

It was about Reds and Ghouls guiding four Grass Giants who were carrying a slab of cut brick down Stair Street. A slab of brick with a bronze web splayed across it. Heavy, from the way they moved. They eased it up to Cruiser Two and set one edge on the running board and rested.

The Ghouls began to talk. The Reds wanted to interrupt, but got little chance.

When all conversation was done, the web and its backing rested on the floor of the payload shell in Cruiser Two. Sleepy Gleaners had come out to join the excitement. Sleepy Ghouls were crawling under an awning. And the way down seemed almost clear.

Somewhere behind black clouds, Valavirgillin thought, shadow must be sliding away to reveal the sun. The only light that reached through the storm was a frenzied dance of lightning.

Four Gleaners and Valavirgillin marched through the rain to the top of Stair Street. They entered the bubble, followed by every hominid save the Ghouls, and climbed the giant steps into that amazing kitchen.

Silack fitted himself into the moving box. Only the other Gleaners knew how he had been chosen over the rest. The flamer fitted easily into his arms.

“Fire it at a wall. Or a vampire, or
anything
,” Manack told him. He was jittery, and he held a Machine People handgun. It took both hands. “I’m coming right down after you with nothing but this, and when I get down, I want light. I want to see what comes at us. Your first move when the door opens, give me
light
.”

They closed the door on Silack and flipped the switch down. There was light enough to watch the line vibrating; noise enough too.

The motor noise stopped.

They waited.

Manack tried to move the switch. It didn’t respond to easy pressure. Vala restrained him from using more force.

The switch clicked up by itself, and the line began to vibrate. They waited while the box rose into view.

Silack rolled out and sucked air for a great shout. “Light!” he bellowed. Perilack threw herself at him and hugged him tight. He talked over her shoulder. “Manack, I’m
sorry
, but the panel was
right there
, and I thought I might want to leave fast when I turned the switches on, and flup, was I
right
! I turned on all the lights at once, and the—“

Perilack cried, “They’re
on
?”

“*Yes*,” said Silack, and his audience ran away.

Valavirgillin was gasping and staggering as she reached Ramp Street. The Gleaners and Reds were far ahead of her and the other Machine People. The Grass Giants were pounding along behind them.

Ramp Street’s lights burned through the rain. They swarmed down the ramp.

There was light below, too, and a traffic jam out of nightmare. Light blazed pitilessly on the great central structure, on sage and windows and running water, and all the space around it. The Shadow Nest was brighter than the murky daylight. Vampires caught in the light were trying to get out. Vampires returning from their hunt were trying to get in.

Silack was shouting, “As soon as the lights came on, the vampires ran every way there was. Two or three tens of them decided the offices were a cave! There’s a big space in there that overlooks the stage on one side and the speaking platform on the other—Harpster was right about that—and connects to the offices, too. Vampires were coming at me from three directions. Manack, I propped the door open to the moving box ten I got out. Time I got down, I knew I didn’t want it leaving without me!”

“You greedy flup-sculptor, you!”

“I know, Manack—“

“You took all the glory!”

“—I was very, very glad I still had the box. They came in, I flamed them, I went up.”

Murderous fights were developing between vampires who wanted in and those who wanted out. Three turns above, Grass Giants were starting to cheer them on. In a moment they”d be taking bets.

Valavirgillin announced, “Listen up! I’m thinking this is the best time to get out. Most of the vampires are still out hunting, and most of what we’ve got are blind and confused. If we wait as much as a tenthday, the hunters will be home and we’ll have to wait for night. I’m hungrier than that. So we go now!”

If I’m crazy, point it out!

They looked at her in a silence broken only by shrieking of ten thousand vampires.

“Now!” she bellowed, and her people began to run.